What does change entail? Why are we afraid? This goes along with Failure, being Afraid to Fail and its cousin, Afraid of Success. Which camp do you belong to?
We are all afraid of something, whether we admit it or not. We all have strengths and weaknesses, whether we admit it or not! A lot of times these characteristics go hand in hand, and this translates through every aspect of life, be it
- Going to a new school in a new state
- Embarking on a new relationship
- Losing or gaining weight
- Changing your body in some way
- Changing your beliefs or questioning your values
- Learning a new, challenging piece of music
- Entering the gym, be it the first time or the 100th time
- Accepting compliments
- Accepting criticisms
- Failing
- Succeeding
- Embarking on a new workout routine -venturing into the weight room and out of the cardio room
Are you a human being or a human doing?
Change Takes Change (Tangent)
It is OK to NOT do, just as it is OK to do. We get very caught up in being busy, in appearing busy, making things, doing things, how much of it is done to look good to others, to please others, or, as Dave Ramsey would say “we buy things we don’t want with money we don’t have to impress we don’t like”.
Can you translate that to your exercise life? Are you on a desperate carousel of weight loss or body transformation to “please people you don’t like”? How many of you get up at the crack of dawn to spend an hour on the elliptical, prepare meals that are tasteless and don’t satisfy, only to stare into the mirror and think “I’m fat and I don’t like myself”?
If you gave yourself permission to stop right now and change for you what would you do differently? Would you hire a personal trainer to take out off the elliptical and teach you about weights? Would you listen to your body and eat what you know is healthy, but in ways that TRULY satisfied you? Would life suddenly take on new joy and excitement in the journey that you suddenly realized you WANTED to take?
Can you translate that to your musical life? How much practice are you putting in to achieve YOUR OWN goals and not someone else’s? Would you quit torturing yourself over mistakes and start loving your sound? Would your attitude towards performance change to one of “Let me share this music with you that I love, so you can love it too” instead of “The audience is out to notice my every mistake and they’re waiting for me to fail”. Would you still practice 4-6 hours a day? Would you play more? Less? Start a group? Leave a group? What would you do FOR YOU?
So the question remains, what would you do if you gave yourself permission to NOT DO?
(Tangent over 🙂 )
Identify Your Fear
This could be scary for you, but whatever your situation in life (relationships, trusting God, losing weight, learning a new way to practice/learn/play your instrument) you have a challenge. If it’s not right now, it will be in the future, or you have had one in the past. Stop and think for a minute, what change are you facing or thinking of facing? If you choose not to change, is it based on the fear that that change might bring? What is your fear? Some quick examples:
- Learning to breathe from a new part of your body when you play, thus changing how you’ve ALWAYS played
- Learning to accept criticism without taking it personally
- Accepting your body as it is right now (which could be change for you) and if you decide to further change your body, what fears do you have about changing?
Body Awareness
Sadly, body awareness is not something that can be taught or adequately covered in a blog post, but I can at least start the thought for you.
- Do this with me, look away from the computer and list off all the feelings you have in your body. Are you suddenly aware that you can feel multiple things at the same time? Close your eyes, does the awareness intensify? Do you feel pain? Do you feel comfort? Do you feel yourself starting to judge yourself for “poor posture”?
- Lay on the floor and, starting from your feet, notice where your body is in contact with the floor and where there are spaces. Compare those spaces to each other. Work your way up your body from feet to head to hands. There is no right or wrong in this, how you lie on the floor is how you lie on the floor. No judging, just notice. Does that feel strange to do? To not berate yourself that your feet are not pointing in the same direction, or you have pain in your hips and know it’s because of your posture, etc? The first step in change is awareness. When you become aware, you are no longer judging, and from there, you give yourself the freedom to change or not to change.
“Awareness is attention that observes what you are doing without pushing you in a particular direction.” – Geneen Roth - Now, think about how you are going to get up, without actually doing it. That should be REALLY weird.As yo find your way to get up, remember, there is no right or wrong, just notice how you do it because really, when was the last time you noticed how you got up and down from the floor?
- Try a chair. This I learned from Alexander Technique. Sit in a chair and just observe yourself, how you are sitting, where you are sitting. Put your hand on the back of your neck and stand up. Did you feel the muscles in your neck tense? Sit down and notice if they tense again. I will teach you a way to get up with less tension. Keep your hand on the back of your neck, but this time, before you stand, I want you to lean forward, from your hips (not your waist) until you are leaning far over, so far over that it’s almost hard to NOT stand up. Lean forward from your hips until the momentum carries you out of the chair and you stand up. If you did this “correctly” (haha) you will have noticed that the muscles under your hand in your neck barely tensed at all.
Amazing what you just learned about yourself!
So, you have just learned to observe yourself without judging. Was that scary? Do you have the courage to change now? Think about it, can you go throughout your day NOT judging yourself (or others) just observing? It can be a real challenge to do that and maybe even scary…but it can also be the first step to beautiful change.
As this applies to your instrument, the next time you pick it up to play, or sing, can you be very aware of the rest of your body? Can you think about the backs of your knees while you play? What about the outsides of your elbows? Do you feel the insides of your toes? Notice how you feel before playing, how the instrument feels in your hands, how your body reacts or doesn’t react and then when you begin to play, what changes? How do you feel?
When you are in tune with your body you will be able to pick up on pain and other strange things much more quickly. As my Professor at FSU is famous for saying “Do you feel your feet while you play?”
Have the Courage to Go Into The Fear
In Music or performing: like I said, fear and change can go hand in hand. My teacher at Florida State University, Eva Amsler is an absolute master at helping you learn to not only judge yourself, but learn to observe, have the courage to change and face your fears of failure AND success (mine was somehow the latter!).
One of the things she is big on is performance anxiety. This is HUGE. How many of us get nervous before we perform? Some of us get so nervous we get physical symptoms that prevent us from playing well: shaking hands, shaking lips, queasy stomach, weak knees, etc. She said that one day before she was about to perform, she noticed that her hands were cold. And she thought to herself “I wonder if I can make my hands colder?” She actually TRIED to make her hands colder! And do you know what happened? They got warmer!
Think how much courage that takes. Imagine your symptom is that you get butterflies in your stomach and I asked you, a few minutes before you were to take the stage, to notice those butterflies, acknowledge them….and make them WORSE! It takes immense courage to change, but I can vouch for the fact that every time I have had the courage to make my symptoms worse the end result is that they have lessened. Now, sometimes there is nothing you can do, especially if you are unprepared, but this technique is the result of the assumption that you are as prepared as you can be and all you are doing is acknowledging the part of you that is frightened and unsure and basically giving yourself reassurance.
As this relates to fitness: fitness can be a very scary place and it is easy to become overwhelmed by what we don’t know. We pick what is safe (machines) because it’s what everyone does and we’re less likely to “screw up”. Believe it or not, by those who understand fitness, we see a lot more people “screwing up” on machines than not.
Do you have the courage to REALLY change your body? This will be covered more in the “Are You Afraid of Success” post, but think about it. You desperately want to change. You want visible abs, tight legs, to be rid of the bat wings…what is holding you back? If you are not exercising or eating well, there’s part of your answer, but sometimes what we’re doing isn’t working, but we stick with it because we don’t know what else to do.
This is where it makes sense to hire a trainer – even if only for a few sessions, maybe a week or two, to show you around, help you understand how do lift weight safely, and progress properly. Let me tell you right now – lifting weights (strength training) can be very scary. It will take EVERYONE out of their comfort zone at some point, which is the goal, because you cannot grow stronger, you cannot change your body without challenging your comfort zone. A personal trainer will be there right by your side to guide you so that you do not hurt yourself and that you do not back down into your fear, but that you bust through it.
Now that you know what it takes, are you really ready to change your body? For those who have the courage to embark on the path, they will all tell you it was hard, it was scary, but it was worth it and they are glad they did.
Quotes about Change
“Change happens the way a plant grows: slowly, without force, and with the essential nutrients of love and patience and a willingness to remain constant through periods of stress” – Geneen Roth
“If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” ~Author Unknown
“Change is inevitable. Everybody has to deal with it. On the other hand, growth is optional. You can choose to grow or to fight it.” – John C. Maxwell“There is no improvement except through change. To improve continually we must change continually. You can’t avoid fear. No magic potion will take it away. And you can’t wait for motivation to get you going. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway” – John C. Maxwell
Change does not happen overnight, no matter how much we want it to. No matter how badly we want to memorize a scale, lost 20 pounds or have a significant other, it simply does not happen with wanting it badly enough. However, when you do want something badly enough, that can give you the courage you need to change your circumstances and make those things happen.
Pretty empowering, huh? 🙂
But with desire and change also comes failure. This is the second part…do you have the courage to fail? And the third part, which might actually be more difficult…do you have the courage to succeed?
